the cure for loneliness
is to remember you were once
the apple of the hurricane’s eye
From “The Remedy for Loneliness” in OHIO RADIO, Renée Agatep
By Natasha O’Hara
This evening, Renée Agatep, will be visiting campus for a live reading with poet and former IUSB professor, Nancy Botkin. Agatep will be reading from her collection, OHIO RADIO, which won the 2022 Wolfson Press Chapbook Prize.
This event will be held at the Education and Arts Building Auditorium (EA-1011), and will start off with FREE pizza at 5pm, then poetry at 5:30.
Renée Agatep grew up in rural Ohio, and now resides on a small island in the Atlantic. She earned her master’s at Northeastern University and is a fellow in the Syracuse MFA program. Among winning the Wolfs Press Chapbook Prize, Agatep is also a Best New Poets, Best Microfictions, and Best of the Net nominee. Other works of hers include: chapbook Funny Zoo and The Iceman’s Purse, a prompted creative writing journal.
When you first heard the news that you had been selected, what did that look like for you?
Nancy Botkin, the judge for the contest, reached out to me directly with specific praise and feedback. It felt like a big stroke of luck. I could tell she appreciated the poems on a personal level, so I knew my chapbook had made it to the right poet. I’m extremely fortunate to have Nancy on the other side of the world receiving my emails and reading my poems.
How was the process of submitting your collection to Wolfson Press’s Contest?
Wolfson Press the was the first place I sent OHIO RADIO, and I expected a swift rejection. That’s the way of most publication attempts – swift rejection. I’m very lucky in that I’d had a couple of presses ask me to send along a collection as soon as I had one complete, but the way any poem is edited is almost as important as writing it in the first place. I wasn’t sure where this thing belonged. There are always going to be people who ‘get’ your poems, and a lot of people who don’t. In publishing individual poems from the collection, I realized they resonated in a very regional way. I found that UK, Irish, American Rust Belt and Appalachian publications were very supportive of these poems. I sent it to Wolfson Press in South Bend, Indiana hoping for the best.
Was OHIO RADIO always the option for the title?
I had the support of my mentor, Christopher Kennedy, at Syracuse University while I was putting together OHIO RADIO. A huge part of writing for me, especially trying to capture something so personal, has been overcoming self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Elitism is pervasive in the poetry world, both in form and subject matter. These poems about leaving rural American poverty, with all her ain’ts and gonnas, didn’t go over well with everyone.
Christopher Kennedy is a very talented, working-class poet. Though he’s much more accomplished, we came from similar backgrounds. Reading his work and hearing his advice gave me a lot of confidence to get the writing done. Over the course of about 9 months, he was actively validating the voice these poems were coming from. He would give me reading suggestions for poets he knew would validate and improve the choices I was making in my own work. I remember telling him, “I think it’s called ‘Ohio Radio’.” He gave me one of his big, emphatic, silent nods. I trust him, so I knew I’d landed in the right place.
At what age did you begin writing poetry, and what poets/writers influenced you during this time?
I don’t remember not writing poetry. I wish I could impress you and tell you that Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grasscaptivated me at the age of 6, but I was really into gross things and anything that made me laugh. I loved Shel Silverstein, and I spent a lot of time at Marvin Memorial Library. I wasn’t able to get a library card, so I spent whole days lying in the aisle, re-reading and memorizing A Light in the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Falling Up. My daughter is six years old now, and she loves Shel Silverstein as well. Her work is much better than mine.
How has writing about your past affected you as a poet and a person?
When I was building my portfolio to apply for MFA programs, I was using Kim Addonizio’s A Poets Companion. I don’t have a formal poetry background, so I was using her (very useful) craft exercises to draft new poems. I wouldn’t sit down to write a particular poem; I was finding connections between single words that appealed to me. Those connections kept taking me back to a place I didn’t think I needed to think about anymore.
Brooks Haxton, Bruce Smith, and Chris Kennedy all helped me see this theme of the past in the present and this long-gone Ohio origin surfacing in my poems. I prefer to write absurdist stories and poems. I’m against, or at least not comfortable with, trauma as exhibition. I don’t like it in films or books or poems or paintings. I didn’t want to create more of that. It was not easy for me to recognize that I needed to return to that place mentally and make a real effort to write about it. It was difficult to do at the time, but my work since finishing OHIO RADIO has been freer of place, or at least that place. It’s given me a new sense of closure to feel as though I said what I needed to say about the past.
Where else do you draw inspiration from?
The natural world is always an inspiration. Even unfamiliar landscapes have a strange way of reminding us. Other poets definitely helped me arrive at this place. The poems of Ray Young Bear, Natalie Diaz, Lynn Emmanuel, Gary Soto, Gregory Orr, Franz Wright, Denis Johnson, Tommy Pico, and Etheridge Knight come to mind.
What does your writing process look like?
I write down snippets of ideas on cocktail napkins or in my notes app on my phone. When I have a moment to breathe, I look at those notes and try to latch on to one that makes sense to me in the moment. It’s a much less frequent and organized practice than the one I’d like to have. I wish I could tell you that I am one of those writers who wakes up at 5 AM and writes every day. That really is the best way. Writing is a craft, and honing a craft takes practice. I’m a mom of two lovely, small people. I work as a consultant in a very time-consuming field. I hope one day to be someone who writes every day, but I don’t know when or if I’ll get there.
What do you enjoy about live readings?
I’ve watched a recording of Roger Reeves reading from his collection King Me about 100 times. The energy he has, the delivery, the cadence and lyricism of his poems… it really has the power to sweep you away. I get caught up in that energy, in the urgency, the seriousness and the play in his work. I find new connection in his poems, new layers of meaning and emotion when he reads aloud. Roger Reeves can compel people on page and do it again in a whole new way with his voice. If you haven’t seen him read, I really recommend taking the time. It will give you a new appreciation for live readings.
What is the best writing advice someone has given you?
Poets and writers have been very generous with me. I kick myself every day that I didn’t write down every wonderful piece of advice Chris, Brooks, and Bruce gave me off the cuff. I feel like I carry their advice with me, but I couldn’t put it to words for you the way they did for me.
There’s an email exchange between Bill Knott and David Lehman, who was representing Best American Poetry at the time. He was exhausted with the whole publishing business and had been from the start. Bill was declining to be included in Best American, which most people would consider an honor, and seemed crazy to the editors. He asked, “Why can’t I quit? Why can’t I just write my crummy poems?”
Now I think that all the time. No one can stop you. Just write your crummy poems.
What advice can you give for poets/writers?
I put together a lot of the best advice I’ve come across in The Iceman’s Purse. I don’t know that I have any advice of my own for poets or writers. I suppose I’d just say something cliché, like “write the thing you need to write”. That sounds like a lot of bunk. If I heard that, I’d probably roll my eyes and wonder what kind of help that is.
That’s really it though. Write what you need to write right now. That might not be even remotely the thing you need to write when you wake up tomorrow. You can’t worry about what people want to publish or what other people find valuable. Let people embrace it or spit on it or call it names or give it girl scout badges. It won’t matter. Just write your poem or your story and let that be enough.
What did you wish you knew when you started?
I didn’t know the kind of community that exists between working class poets around the world. The writing you must do alone, you must do that part yourself. What’s worse is it has to come from a very lonely, isolated version of yourself. On the other hand, you absolutely cannot edit alone, and you cannot publish alone. It’s a weird thing to accept, that you must be this very lonely person who also relies on so many people.
My friend Dr. Taylor Byas, who just won the Maya Angelou Book Award for her poetry collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, was one of the poets who helped me apply for MFAs. She helped edit my statement and my poetry, she’s given me advice and feedback on pieces. Can you imagine a poet that skilled and talented would just give you, some random internet stranger, their time? Just to be kind?
Another friend, Yusuf Akman is a PhD candidate at Florida State. They’re one of my closest friends and my best editor.
Again, I’ve never met them in person. These are people who have spent their time, hours and hours over the course of years, helping me with my poetry. The list goes on and on, poets who have supported me and given me their time, advice, and skilled feedback. Trust other poets with your work. Yes, life is long, life is lonely. But poetry is the least lonely place around.
The Deadline 